TBS: Suleiman of Maya

[The Black Sword]

Here's my revealed map. The extra corn locked in the 2nd city location, but I was hoping to find a bit more than just 1 extra power tile. No obvious candidates for the 3rd city yet either, that river feels a bit too far away.

I've been mulling over two other decisions that had to be made quickly, whether to revolt into my religion now and whether to tech straight for Music.

For religion I either revolt now, or wait for my golden age whenever that might be. This is the cheapest it will be with my worker improving the corn. I'm not sure how much infra I'll really build before the GA though. We already get the most important stuff, granaries & lighthouses, for free and I mostly want to focus on horizontal growth pre-GA. However the capital will probably get a full set of infrastructure; Forge, market, Lib and I also want to try for either the Great Library or the MoM, so i decided to eat the revolt turn in the end. I think I will make use out for the extra happiness too. 3 revolts inside the first 20t does make you wonder about spiritual, but hopefully IMP can surpass it.

Regarding the wonder build btw, my idea is to use the capital's forests to chop it out, but I'm not sure I'll be able to resist the power of 45h chops when I get Bureau. I'm definitely saving the forests for then anyway.

As for music, I'd really like to win the artist. Build culture is useful but if you have a missionary ready for each city I don't think it's that much of a boost. Besides CS, no other tech looks that useful short term, but I could always save gold for an academy too. I think someone will need to bulb to beat me to the artist though. Even if they tech Music before CS, I'll be doing the same thing(since my bulb completes all of CS) and the +50% commerce boost should give me an edge. That leaves Chumchu and GJ as competition. Chumchu has access to the GP slots but I don't see him spending 34 early specialist turns to do the bulb. GJ is trickier. I think he will bulb CS too but he will be a bit slower than me to do it. I need to do the bulb ASAP to get into slavery but he can take his time and do it more optimally. Music is also less valuable for him because the ability to run artists to pop borders weakens culture builds even further. He could possibly use his second GP to get an artist, but the second GP is expensive this early, even for a Phi civ and I'll probably have the tech finished by T30. I don't think it's worth a bulb in his spot when the free great artist will probably sit around useless for ages.

I think I have the best shot at it, and it's pretty low risk(albeit also low reward), so I'm going to go for it. I needed to turn on tech now, because with all the gold I'm getting from merchants I won't run out before I get the tech.

[The Black Sword]

Met Gav(in the East) and Chumchu(in the West) already. That's a bit earlier than I expected but still, with the raw number of tiles on this map I should be fine to develop the capital first and push expansion later. The map looks like a Donut script right now. 

[The Black Sword]

Not much happening in game at the moment, still collecting scouting info to determine my 3rd city site. The horse/wheat site in the east is the current candidate. My Hindu missionary has been helping with the scouting mission but ran into a lion this turn. Unless he has Daniel-esque faith he's probably dead. I was hoping to bring him home eventually for another monastery in the capital but that's so far down the line I wanted to get some use out of him first.

Anyway, in the meantime I have some pictures from my sim.



The plan in the capital is to grow as quickly as possible to size 7 and then spit out a GM. We spend 1t at size 2 working the fish, after that we work the copper every turn to get the WB out. Once the WB is out, even the copper isn't worth working.

Since the capital is about to go into Bureau, any food we put into it will come out with a +50% modifier in slavery. So it gets all the attention and the second city gets ignored. The best way to get a worker out in the second city is to grow to size 4 and whip it. We start with a granary so growing to whip is a lot better than slow building. Perhaps a chop + 2->1 whip would be a better option for some of the other teams, that also doesn't spend ages slowbuilding 30 foodhammers. But I don't really have that option, Slavery doesn't come online until I hit size 4 anyway. Besides, my worker is improving corn -> corn -> corn, even the third corn will be 6 yield after I bulb CS, so I'm not sure about diverting worker turns to chops. I'll get a +50% bonus on those chops in a few turns too.


That's the basic plan, my capital will need the 2 archers to remain happy(I'm slightly worried about barb interruptions here), so the second city will build itself a warrior. We'll time the build so it overflows the maximum 2h to put into a worker.



Each city wants to have 1 turn put into a worker so we're ready to whip them. The capital will do that next turn, giving away the shared corn tile for the only turn so it wastes no food into the build. Since city 2 will have access to the corn next turn(and it's own corn gets improved IIRC), it needs to put a turn into the worker now, again so that we put as few food into the 'slowbuild' turn as possible.



After 3 turns at size 7, averaging 24gpp each turn, the Great Merchant completes(we had a couple of gpp from earlier sizes). The capital is ready to whip a worker, regrow to size 6 on the same turn, and then 1t another worker with the overflow. City 2 can whip it's worker, and with the help of the chop pictured, it will also 1t a second worker(at exactly 60/60).

That will be 5 workers, cities at pop 6 and 2 and Bureaucracy. We'll see how we expand from there.

[The Black Sword]

I'm pretty sure I have to chop those capital forests. Tech seems really fast and expansion a bit slower than I expected. I was thinking of holding the forests for TGL, but that's trading expansion for tech yet again. 45h per chop is too good to pass up and I should clear cut it ASAP.

Here's the currently discovered land:


The land is a bit less lush than I expected after seeing such an amazing capital. I'm looking at settling the wet corn and wet wheat for cities 3 and 4. Chumchu border is really awkward, I need to get the wet corn in the first ring for a decent city but it's so far away , and I'd need to build some actual defenders too. His explorer is really sticking around my territory too, I thought he'd be off once he got trade routes.

I want to settle cities that accelerate the snowball rather than claim land. With so many tiles on the map there'll easily be stuff available to claim later.

[The Black Sword]

[The Black Sword]

You might think in a game where we start with granaries there would be no avoid growth tricks, not so:



Without avoid growth, we'd grow to size 3 and put 58/60 into the worker. IIRC what happens is that the city grows first, but doesn't assign a new tile until next turn. Then it goes to count the food surplus to be added to production and the food surplus is only +8 instead of +10.

I'm pretty happy with my planned locations for cities 3 and 4(both settled around T109), currently trying to see if I can send city 5 to the contested river/corn spot. I'm seriously low on units though and I want to send both of the starting archers if possible. 

Btw, I'm also really delaying hooking up my commerce tiles, the gems, dyes and wine. I just want to focus on expansion instead. It's possible someone could beat me to Music if they're trying. Still, I'll have a decent time thanks to Bureau, I think it unlikely anyone else is teching that way and the artist is not that important.

[RefSteel]

Without avoid growth, we'd grow to size 3 and put 58/60 into the worker. IIRC what happens is that the city grows first, but doesn't assign a new tile until next turn. Then it goes to count the food surplus to be added to production and the food surplus is only +8 instead of +10.

Yup. I really hate this bug. On this site at least, my team in PB3 was the first to "discover" it in-game, and had no idea what was going on. T-Hawk looked into the matter and figured it out, along with the Avoid Growth "fix."

[The Black Sword]

It'd suck to get surprised by that in game.



I'm about to settle two cities in 2 turns. GJ just settled his first last turn and Cairo settled earlier too, but surprisingly I'm going to beat everyone else? OT4E and Gav appear to have grown their capitals quite large and chumchu has most the most total pop. Judging be the tech rate on the demos they're connecting their commerce resources too. I'm just not really sure about snowballing tech first, tech is so expensive right now and I'm not even sure I would use anything after Music. I'm probably going for Feudalism for LBs but Horchers & Cats for zone defense, Holkans and archers for static seems fine to me. I'm quickly going to get 2 more settlers from the capital in the next 5ish turns and then I can start developing it more vertically.

The 2 settlers are mainly aimed at the plains hill corn spot and the 2nd jungle/corn spot. I'll rotate around an archer and a warrior to defend each settlement. The plan is also flexible in that we road towards the contested river spot and could potentially try claim it instead. I'm not really optimistic however, I'm last in soldier count(having built only 1 extra warrior so far) and chumchu appears to have built quite a few units himself.

Incidentally, we will have whipped 7 pop and chopped all 6 forests in the capital within roughly the first 15t in Bureau. That's almost 200h from Bureau already. We could think of the opportunity cost of the specialist turns as a farm - 3 food each, so the cost was around 51 food.

[The Black Sword]

Ran into the borders of a barb city, which looks like it's been artist bombed:


Looks Tasunke might have buffed their defenses a bit. The map feels a bit smaller than the initial tile estimate implied. I haven't explored over to Gav's borders yet, but the mountain range in the east feels like a natural border with two rivers symmetrically on either side of it. I've been assuming that's the midpoint so far, though I'm chopping an explorer in city 3 to confirm. The center of the map seems to have a bunch of dead tiles, aside from the barb cities. There should be a fair amount of tiles out on the water, and my capital is starting on a galley to try confirm that. Still, the number of obvious city sites after my next two are taken is quite small, so I'm seriously looking at settling the contested river next. If I send my next settler there, I could found on T115, with the archer and explorer defending it, a warrior and second archer coming behind and the gold to upgrade the warrior if necessary. Chumchu still hasn't settled his third city yet, so maybe that could work. I'd need to make the decision to switch from my current plan on T113. Worker support would be slightly delayed.

[The Black Sword]

Well, that's going to be pretty annoying.



Won the Music artist at least.